Download PDF The nation is celebrating the birth centenary of Zainul Abedin, the pioneer of modern art in Bangladesh. He was born on 29 December in 1914 and died on 28 May 1976 at 62. The year long programme began …

Introduction Water Supply, Sanitation and hygiene are the most common and important basic needs for people living in any society. As urban areas grow; more pressure has been put on local water supplies, for as quality of water available to …

This study on Greater Dhaka Region (GDR) explores the nature of the competitiveness of Dhaka in the context of its rapidly changing characteristics in recent years and its dominant role in the economy of Bangladesh. The study is a part …

Introduction The recent accident at Savar (on 24 April 2013) due to the collapse of a nine storey building accommodating five export oriented Ready Made Garment (RMG) industries resulted in the death of at least 1129 workers and injuring more …

Introduction This paper highlights the trends and characteristics of urban planning education, research and profession in Bangladesh during last 40 years, from 1971 to 2011. The period under the study is important as it corresponds to the life of Bangladesh …

Bangladesh has a long history of local government, both rural and urban. Although the purpose of having local governments is to help taking services close to the people, in reality, the purpose has not been achieved satisfactorily, mainly because of the absence of a proper system of decentralization. However, while many studies have accurately and repeatedly identified the broad issues either on legal framework or on the practice at the local governments, there remains a lack of in depth probing into the effects of intervening factors and actors that play critical roles in creating current state of implementation.
The SDLG project funded by USAID and implemented by Tetra Tech ARD initiated a focused research to identify the core issues and cause that lead to ineffectiveness of the LGs in strengthening public services. The Center for Urban Studies (CUS), Dhaka conducted a study on Paurashavas, as urban local government institution. The scope of the field level investigation, however, was limited to Paurashavas of four divisions. These are Dinajpur, Barisal, Sylhet and Chittagong (excluding the Hill districts). The study covered 8 Paurashavas in A, B and C categories from the four regions. The study was conducted during 12 September, 2011 to 11 September, 2012. The study was led by Professor Nazrul Islam, Honorary Chairman of CUS, with Architect –Planner Salma A. Shafi as the Deputy Leader and Professor Amirul Islam Chowdhury, Professor Aktar Hossain, Professor Farzana Islam, Prof. Dr. Nurul Islam Nazem as Advisory Member.

Ours is now an urbanized world with more than half of the planet’s population living in officially defined urban areas. Urbanization, as it is very well known, is a manifestation of economic, technological, social and political forces. Urbanization is itself a process with its impacts on environmental, economic, social and political structures of a society. Even within the same political-economic system, there are very efficient and highly livable cities and also very inefficient and unlivable cities.

This study on Mapping Poor Settlements and Vacant Lands in 27 UPPR towns and cities is an initiative primarily to identify the locations where the poor people live and to derive their poverty status. The aim is to set a base line to monitor future changes in these settlements in terms of their existence (age), physical area, household numbers and density. Secondly the study also aims at explaining 16 thematic poverty indicators and aggregate poverty index at city/town, ward and settlement levels. Third is to identify vacant lands to suggest appropriate measures for a pro poor land use strategy. All these objectives were set to improve our knowledge about the dynamics of urban poor in terms of their location pattern, size, and the magnitude of poverty and also to assess the capacity to address problems they are facing.